Observations by an academic researcher on the use of “open”-ness as a competitive strategy, with a particular interest in coping with the commoditization of information goods and technologies in an Internet-enabled world.

Perhaps — whether or not they know Google has a 29% return on sales and is throwing off $4 billion/year — they see that Google has the resources and strategic intent to diversify into voice communications in a serious way.

Or maybe — after discussing the Skype reliability debacle — they were hoping that if anyone could provide quality, scaleable services for free, it’s Google.

Good buddy is close friends with E. Schmidt. Talks to him about email. Comment in the conversation from Dr. S; "We lose all sorts of email, beauty is no one cares/notices - it's not expected to be that reliable and it just gets resent anyway!"

I'm talking to a VC the other day. He's all bummed out. Seems he moved totally over to g-office; gmail, gword, gspreadsheet, gtalk, etc, etc. Why's he upset? The whole thing went down for two days and he couldn't get his email, his documents, his connections! Bummer. Worse? Go to www.google.com and look for the contact information for help when this happens :) Ask the question "I lost my document" as a start :)

It was me who made the prediction. So I'm taking credit like you said to. Don't RYE (roll your eyes), I'm just inflating that ego of mine a little bit more. =)

And I was not entirely aware of Google's current successes, but what did tip me off was what happened roughly two years ago. eBay bought Skype. (I don't know why, I was hoping now I could actually yell at that terrible eBay seller, but that dream has yet to come true. Maybe you'll explain this in your diversification lecture.) But Google was mentioned to having interest in buying Skype too. Instead a month prior to Skype being sold they vertically integrated and created their own "VOIP" service Google Talk.

In response to Doug's comment on reliability, all of Google's services are in still in beta. Also, the lack of reliability has never been one to stop total world domination. A good example would be Micros... ah crap, gotta restart my machine.

Flash to the future 2025:Larry: The sun will never set on the Googlepire!

Sergey: Muahaha Haha Muahaha Haha

(you can stop doing it now, the people on the other side of the cube are talking about you.)

I wouldn't be so sure about that. If that the case, wouldn't IBM, Microsoft, or any big name be dominating the world right now? And there wouldn't even be Ebay, Youtube, Myspace, Google, Craigslist, ... at this moment.

Expansion is good, but when you are moving into various areas, you are loosing your main focus and specialization as well. There are existing and established competitors in these markets who are ready to put up quite a fight.

Total World Domination, quite an ambition, but in reality, I doubt its feasibility in many aspects beyond just simply finance and technology.

Re g-stuff in beta: this has become quite the industry joke, actually. When does something come out of beta? What does beta mean? You can use it as long as you don't expect anything more reliable than we are in the mood to provide?

I'm actually not against what the g-plex is doing, I just wish terms like beta still had some sort of meaning (or at least people that use the terms would provide some definition of them :)